i eat questions for breakfast

It takes courage to ask tough questions. First of all it takes courage with yourself… to be honest with yourself. Then, secondly, it takes courage with others because thinking independently is risky. I think most of you who read my blog are acutely aware of this, having learned from experience.

Be a champion! Never stop raising the question. Ask the questions that need to be asked! Eat questions for breakfast!

“First-hand religion is based on direct experience of the sacred, also called mystical experience. Second-hand religion is based on another’s experience, authority, or dogma. This distinction is often framed as the difference between spirituality (first-hand) and religion. (second-hand).” –John Davis

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” – Mark Twain

“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.” –Anais Ninn

“The institutions of Churchianity are not Christianity. An institution is a good thing if it is second; immediately an institution recognizes itself it becomes the dominating factor.” — Oswald Chambers

Many have gone back because they are afraid of looking at things from God’s standpoint. The great crisis comes spiritually when a man has to emerge a bit farther on than the creed he has accepted. ~Oswald Chambers

Belief is reassuring. People who live in the world of belief feel safe. On the contrary, faith is forever placing us on the razor’s edge. –Jacques Ellul

Christians have always tended to transform the Christian Revelation into a Christian religion. Christianity is said to be a religion like any other or, conversely, some Christians try to show that it is a better religion than the others. People attempt to take possession of God. Theology claims to explain everything, including the being of God. People tend to transform Christianity into a religion because the Christian faith obviously places people in an extremely uncomfortable position that of freedom guided only by love and all in the context of God’s radical demand that we be holy.
–Jacques Ellul

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.
–Fyodor Dostoyevski

“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God. ”
— Flannery O’Connor , The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

Now “crisis of faith” takes many shapes and forms. I suppose the salient question is whether a crisis occurs within or against faith. ~Michael Phillips

Lord God of our Fathers; God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ that we may worthily serve the world in his name. ~The Book of Common Prayer According to the use of The Episcopal Church, Eucharistic Prayer C, p.372

Adam Julians

Some people take strong objections to tough questions being made. I’ve found it to be freeing to ask such questions. I’ve learnt to be prepared for a hostile reponse when i do.